In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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In the Golden Age of Hollywood, India represented little more than a mystical land of Rajahs, snake charmers, nubile princesses and elephants. Cannot really blame them – our own cinema of the time was filled with Rajahs and princesses of our own! In Hollywood, this image held sway till as late as the 60s, with […]
All new baddies In the first two decades post Independence, our screen baddies were largely understated in their amorous overtures to the fairer sex. However, as the 70’s with the hippies and counterculture burst into the scene, there came ‘liberation’ from the shackles of tradition, and holding back, in every sense of the term, was […]
As I sat watching Golmaal 3 with a roomful of guffawing and rollicking humans, trying my best to roar with laughter, and hating my inability to do so, the scene that really had me in splits was Mithunda (wearing a delightful toupee) facing off with his girlfriend’s ameer baap, ‘Prem Chopra’ (played by who else: […]
My four-year-old eyes sparkled with wonder as I watched scene after scene unleash the magic of Mr India for the first time on the big screen. I watched it yesterday on television for the nth time and trust me, the magic has stayed alive. Who can forget Anil Kapoor as the ragged violinist with a […]
“Baat Itni Si Hai Ki Vibhajit Hokar Main Kissi Na Kissi Ansh Mein Aap Mein Se Har Ek Vyakti Hoon,” (It is just this-even after being divided or split, in some part or another, I am everyman among you). I remembered these words from Amrish Puri’s autobiography, The Act Of Life while watching a favourite […]